Studies probe mystery of Afro-Argentines

May 6, 2005|By Monte Reel the Washington Post

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- Their disappearance is one of Argentina's most enduring mysteries. In 1810, black residents accounted for about 30 percent of the population of Buenos Aires. By 1887 their numbers had plummeted to 1.8 percent.

So where did they go? The answer, it turns out, is nowhere.

Popular myth has offered two hypotheses: A yellow fever epidemic in 1871 devastated black neighborhoods; and a war with Paraguay in the 1860s put black Argentines on the front lines.

But two new studies challenge those notions, using a door-to-door census to determine how many Argentines consider themselves black and an analysis of DNA samples to detect African ancestry in those who consider themselves white.

The results are only partially compiled, but they suggest many black Argentines did not vanish; they just melded into the populace. According to some researchers, as many as 10 percent of Buenos Aires' residents have black ancestors but don't know it.

"People for years have accepted the idea that there are no black people in Argentina," said Miriam Gomes, a professor of literature at the University of Buenos Aires who is part black. "Even the schoolbooks here accepted this as a fact. But where did that leave me?"

It left her as part of a fringe, a group whose existence was snubbed by the country's early statesmen. The nation aggressively courted "the reviving spirit of European civilization" -- in the words of 19th-century social architect Juan Bautista Alberdi -- and promoted an image of a European country transplanted to South America.

Estimates of Buenos Aires' current black population are essentially guesses, partly because the Argentine government has not reflected African ancestry in its census in more than a century.

Gomes is among a group of scholars and scientists who want to take a closer look at today's black culture in Argentina to help form a clearer picture of the past.

Funded in part by the World Bank and assisted by Argentina's census bureau, the group launched a limited census of neighborhoods in the capital last month.

First, they asked whether any people in the house considered themselves Afro-Argentine; then they asked whether anyone in the house had black ancestors. In neighborhoods with historically high concentrations of black residents, they conducted more detailed surveys of religious practice, diet and social organization -- an attempt to measure the influence of African culture there.